


Didn't Know Where else to go Buck....

by Magnoliachild



Category: Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Bathing/Washing, Bucky moved to the South, Fluff, Grinding(mentioned), Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Steve has Tattoos, Tattoos, house husbands
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-28
Updated: 2021-01-28
Packaged: 2021-03-14 00:41:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29038026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Magnoliachild/pseuds/Magnoliachild
Summary: Based off a tumblr prompt, Hero shows up to villian's door looking like shit then collapses and the Villian takes care of the hero.Except Stucky. cause why the hell not.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 4
Kudos: 40





	Didn't Know Where else to go Buck....

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first work in the fandom in a good minute, so be gentle. XD Hope the small few of y'all who read this enjoy!!   
> Kudos and comments are my only serotonin! ( Gotta love college)

He feels the noise before he hears it, trained from years of having to be spatially aware to survive. Bucky turns around slowly knowing that the trees make more noise than most people expect, waiting to actually hear the noise again. 

There’s a thud and what almost sounds like a gaelic curse. There’s a few more thumps and Bucky gets closer to the window so he can see out. His house isn’t very big, but it’s enough for him. A three bedroom out in rural Mississippi, with a few acres of land, and close enough to a decent sized town that he can blend in and be unnoticed. He bought the old place from the little old lady that had owned it previously with cash that he stole from Hydra bases around the world. 

He hoped that he hadn’t been found, but he liked it there so he would rather fight than run. 

He looks out the window to see a person a lot closer to the house than should have managed, but it’s a moving body that Bucky managed to recognize at even his worst state but he doesn’t trust the figure just yet wanting to know if he can actually trust this. 

Steve hears the door open as he walks or stumbles really, up the stairs and onto the old wood porch. He sees Bucky watching him, as he stands there shivering from blood loss and the drugs that Bruce had given him right before he ran off. He feels a wave of exhaustion hit him so he props up against one of the columns on the porch. 

Bucky knows that something is wrong, while still obviously serum sized Steve looked like what he used to when Buck had to drag him out of fights. 

“What are you doing here?” he gruffly asks. He refuses to fold without knowing what Steve wants or why he was there. He was under the impression that he had managed to hide from everyone. 

Steve opened his mouth to answer and instead of words a ragged gasp caused him to fall to the porch. He tried again, maybe knowing that Bucky needed answers, “I… Didn’t know where else to go…” he managed to force out before he landed in a heap that only looked graceful on Steven Grant Rogers. 

Buck looked at the one and only love of his life, who even though enhanced with a literal super human serum, had fallen to his injuries. After fighting with himself then was probably good for Steve he heaved him up, and took him inside, suddenly very glad that he kept the old beds that hadn’t been used. 

He laid Steve across the old queen bed and went to strip him to look over his injuries, and finally realized what he was wearing. It was obviously made by Tony, but it was a captainized version of Buck’s damn Suit, complete with an almost identical mask. Buck’s hands shook, he remembered what it meant when Steve wore his clothes before the war, it was because that was the only way Steve could express his love for Bucky in that time. 

Buck snapped out of it when Steve’s hand that had been holding something let it clunk to the floor. He went back to getting him out of the outfit and began the routine of checking out his punk to make sure he wasn’t seriously injured. 

Steve was out cold, even when Buck wiped him down with a rag, and changed his clothes, and managed to clean the SEVEN stab wounds, reset his leg, and clean the busted lip and shallow gash on his cheek, granted at the state that Steve was in he’s pretty sure the last one was accidentally self inflicted. 

He leaves a note and goes to the store for the things he knows he’ll need. He’s not letting Steve go anywhere for a good minute, superhero or not. Bucky says no. 

  
  


A good two hours later Bucky gets home from the four stops that he had to make, old pickup loaded down with groceries and assorted house things, he gets it all inside, then checks on Steve before putting everything up. Once that’s done and he starts the soup he planned to make on the stove, he goes into the bedroom again. Steve had obviously gotten up at some point while he was gone because he had gotten under the covers and was holding something. He sees a bag that he didn’t realize that Steve must have been holding earlier, that’s open with clothes and stuff spilled out of it. 

Buck got a step closer and sucked in a deep breath as he figures out what Steve has curled in his hands next to his face. It’s one of Bucky’s favorite shirts, he walks to his room just to see if it had been out or if Steve had found it. He sees that Steve found it, because the little shit had never been good at closing drawers, used to drive Buck up a wall. As he steps out of his room the bathroom light is on, and he sees the medicine cabinet open and can just barely smell the residue of his cologne. 

He feels equal levels of fondness, heartbreak, and surprise. He decides he needs to wake up Steve to see if he should be preparing for an armed squad to show up to take him back or not. 

He gets back to the room and in the late afternoon sun he can just see the crinkle of Steve’s face as he squirms deeper into the shirt, Buck assumes where he sprayed the cologne, and he breathes the quietest breath remembering the days that Steve did that to  _ him _ . 

He sees Steve’s breathing change about the time his mouth opens. 

“You gonna stare at me like that all day or ya gonna cuddle your best guy?” Steve says between stretches and groans. “Why are you here?” Bucky asks, hoping to stay strong and get answers first, even though all he  _ really _ wants to do is drag the man to  **his** bed and discover all of the 6’2 200lb body that he never got to fully explore. 

Steve sits up and rubs his hands through his hair and across his face creating what Buck thinks is a pretty good impression of his sex hair from the 40’s. “I argued with the team and they decided that I’d been going rogue for too long. They gave me some options I wasn’t fond of so I took my shit and left.” he says with a blank face at Bucky. 

Buck huffs, this punk never does anything the easy way. “Steven, I cleaned Seven stab wounds and reset your lower leg. What. Happened.” He said with a sense of finality. Buck had been staying under the radar, but he kept up with stuff, he knew that Steve had left New York after Ultron and had moved somewhere, but how did Steve get from there to his hide away. 

Steve whined as he stood up to actually look at Bucky. “I left New York, I moved to a small house that I had bought right after I woke up, and lived there but still did missions, mostly solo stuff, but occasionally I had to work with someone. Well, this last time Clint got tired of me waiting for a ghost to reappear and lashed out, because I refused to wear my other suits. We finished the mission but after four days of close combat and scouting on foot, I was exhausted, we fought a little bit, thought we were fine, then we get to the Mississippi border and stop to make camp when he loses his shit, and we fought for a while, but I didn’t want to hurt him and I had pulled my mesh layer off, this is the light travel version, it apparently doesn’t block stab wounds who woulda guessed.” Steve finishes with a wince and then wobbles a little into Buck who catches him on instinct. 

“How did you know I was here? And Who else knows?” Bucky asked firmly when Steve looked like he was about to sleep standing up.

“No one, I found you by accident about a year ago, but you seemed happy so I figured you didn’t need me to ruin it.” 

He stood there shocked that Steve had managed to find him and then leave him alone. He thinks for a minute noticing the weight of Steve get slightly heavier, and he shakes him a little bit, “Come on, you have to eat, otherwise you’ll be like a damn hummingbird and die.” 

Steve grins at Buck as he slowly follows him to the kitchen table and sits down as Buck finishes the soup and makes some sandwiches for Steve to help with the serum’s induced metabolism. 

Steve zones in and out reminded of when he was still small, and Buck cooked them dinner. He’s startled out of his memories by a loud yell of, “OH my Fucking GOd you PUNK!! You’re who broke into my house and why the hell I couldn’t find my favorite fucking sweater!!!” Bucky shouted, obviously not actually mad, just annoyed that after 70 goddamn years the little fuckers habits hadn’t changed. He stands there in shock and disbelief as a blush spreads from Steve’s face and ears all the way down his chest. Which Buck is just now seeing is bare. Since the punk is flaunting the serum results in just an open flannel. 

He scans Steve’s body, solely to look at the stab wounds that he closed except then he notices the many marks of  **_Black_ ** ink wrapped around the jut of Stevie’s hips. He felt his mouth fill with saliva at the idea of tracing the marks there,  _ Wanting _ ,  **_NEEDING_ ** to know what they are. 

Steve finally feels Bucky staring at him and looks to see what he’s staring at, and realizes that the tops of his tattoos are showing. He flushed even harder at the idea of having to explain what they are to Bucky. (Who he never thought he’d see again, let alone see in less than all his clothes, even though that’s his deepest dream. Is to have Bucky just like they were right before he was drafted.) Steve stood up about the time that Bucky stepped into his personal space. They stood almost chest to chest, for a few minutes both worried to push too far, but wanting so badly. 

The timer on the stove goes off and startles both boys out of the standoff that they had been having. Steve pulls his pants up a little higher and mutters an excuse and runs to the room he was in and puts on a shirt. 

He goes back to the kitchen and sees that Buck had put a plate and three sandwiches next to a huge bowl of soup. He grins at him noticing how he’s Not looking at Steve. 

Buck eats his bowl not looking up until Steve sits down then he finally meets his eyes. Only to see the shirt that punk is wearing is a long sleeve shirt that has a cartoon version of him holding a teddy bear, that says  _ My Favorite Bucky Bear _ . He almost dies, but he asks anyway, “What the actual Fuck is that Stevie??” he asks with a confused look. 

“It’s the one fan shirt that I couldn’t resist buying.” he says with a shrug as he begins to inhale the food in front of him. 

Bucky watches him as the need to seriously know what they were marks were and if they were the only ones Stevie had. Steve can see Buck thinkin’ real hard after he saw the ink on his hip, he’s really glad he put on the flannel, he’d hate to know what he would think of the other three. 

  
  


They spend the rest of the day just kind of existing. Steve goes back to nap and Buck spends the rest of the day wanting to get to know Steve’s new body like he hadn’t gotten the chance to 70 years ago. He is deluding himself, he doesn’t even know if Steve still loves him. The idea that he might not puts him in a bad mood so he pulls out his running shoes and starts to lap the property. He gets about 10 miles in, before he sees Steve standing on the porch in only his sweats and the band of underwear just barely peeking out. 

He comes to a full stop at the bottom of the porch stairs directly under where Steve is standing. The sweats and bottoms both riding low, lower than he thought Steve could stand. But Buck will thank every god there is because it lets him see in clear light exactly what it is against Steve’s hip. Along with three splashes of color along his left side, the side Buck lost. 

He chokes back a sharp sob as he gets a hair's width away from the skin before he looks to permission from Stevie to touch what Steve clearly intended to show him. 

Buck stares for a minute before he jerks his head up to look Steve in the eyes before he’s distracted by the color following the left side of Steve’s upper body. 

There’s a string of dots, along the bottom of his collarbone, a maroon star on the cap of his shoulder, and then three little letters just above the crook of his elbow. Buck knows exactly what each of these means, the morse code of the Commandos, the star Bucky is made to wear except instead of the red that reminds him of the blood on his hands it's the deep red of the Stealth suit that Steve was so fond of, and finally the three little letters, in a deep navy blue so dark it was almost black,  **JBB.**

**“** I found a way to make the ink stay, and decided I needed things to keep me sane. A way for me to remember.” Steve whispers above him. A thousand miles away from Bucky who just wants to see the hands match up, then to trace them. He looks up and sees a hand reaching for him, he knows the look on Steve’s face, he’s not just offering a hand on the stairs. 

Buck takes the hand and leads Steve to his bedroom. They get to the door and he looks back and Steve shoves him lightly for the hesitation, the habit of treating him like he’s glass. He does what he’s wanted to do since he saw the marks and puts Steve in front of him, in front of a full body mirror, and then slowly tugs the sweats and bottoms down enough to even see the pinky that curves and dips down just a little more than the rest, the same way Buck’s real fingers splayed when layed out from breaking it one too many times. 

He catches Stevie’s perfect cornflower blue eyes in the mirror as he slowly aligns his hands, one warm, one metal. He feels as much as he hears Steve’s stuttered breath. He quits breathing himself as he watches the hands slot in perfectly to the ink. 

Buck doesn’t want to move just yet wants to stay attached to Steve the same way the ink is, permanently. Steve decides that he’s let Buck look long enough, so he turns around holding Bucky’s hands and places one on the middle of his ribs, and the other on the side of his neck, causing Bucky to freeze like a deer in headlights. Steve knows that it’s because his left hand is so close to his throat and that Bucky doesn’t trust himself, so he starts speaking quietly as to not break their bubble, “Ya know I was thinking about another set of them, this lets me look at placement. What do you think, they’d look real Classy there. Much better than Tony’s idea of across my ass.” he says with a small giggle as he watches the idea of that cross Bucky’s mind. 

Bucky starts growling subconsciously, gripping Steve’s ribs tighter as he pulls him closer, until he hears Steve’s moan that was more air than actual noise, but even after everything that Bucky had gone through he was still Steve’s through and through, ‘til the end of the line, just like he always said. He wanted to jerk his hands back but when he moaned he put most of his weight into Bucky causing his arms to drift and wrap to match the ink once again. Buck squeezed ever so gently and watched as those pretty blue eyes rolled back in Steve’s head and his mouth drops open. 

Buck starts moving and then stops suddenly yanking a whine from the person in front of him. “Steve, Steve you have to look at me.” he says and stays still despite the whining and pulling that Steve is attempting, but as always he listens to Bucky. 

“I need a solid answer of what you want from me right now. Because I can’t handle anything bad happening to you. Especially not if it’s because I didn’t check you first alright?” he says almost pleading with Steve to understand. 

Steve knows what Bucky means, so he pulls himself back together long enough to give his lover a solid answer. “I understand that now we are both exiles, in hiding, gone. I know that I have loved you since the day I met you James Buchanan Barnes, I loved you when you beat up bullies, cleaned up my messes, I even loved you when you left me ‘cause of the draft. I loved you when I found you tied to that table, I loved you when I threw my plane into ice because the first seven years of my life without you was already too many. I still loved you when they woke me up and told me what hydra had made you do. I love you. Now and forever, until the end of the line.” Steve took a deep breath and brushed both their tears away and started again. “Tony figured out an ink formula that the serum wouldn’t attack or reject, I bought a tattoo gun that night and spent weeks practicing on all the fake skin I could buy. I decided the next thing I did permanently to my body had to be important, so I picked four things, because for each thing I thought of only the important things, you. And they all revolved around you, or us. So, anything that you want to investigate go right ahead. I want you to love me however you think you can. Even if it’s not entirely the same as when we were younger. I will take everything you are willing to give me. But nothing you’re not willing to share. I love you, and you have me for as long as you’re willing to keep me. In return I’ll take whatever you want me to have.” 

Bucky has tears streaming slowly down his face as he pulls Steve in for their first kiss since 1941. He kisses until his lungs burn, but he keeps kissing until Steve separates them both enough to gasp against each other. They make it to Bucky’s bed, the only thing in the house he had splurged on, a huge California king that took up most of the bedroom. Covered in soft blankets and four times as many pillows as any one person needs. 

They fall onto the bed, Bucky kneeling over Stevie, letting himself scoot down and trace the hands on the other’s hips. He freezes when he realizes that the one on Steve’s left that matches the metal abomination on his body is shaded to look corrugated like the interlocking plates in his arm. He presses his lips to it, and just collapses and lays there against Steve who doesn’t question why Bucky laid down but slowly pets his head and holds his hand, while Bucky’s other one traces his initials on his arm. 

They lay there tangled, napping and making out until the early hours of the morning, until they finally managed to get the rest of their clothes off, and aligned their bodies enough to get the friction they both desperately were looking for, and they hold each other until the shaking stops. 

Bucky gets up and drags a rather uncooperative Steve down the hall to the main bathroom, silently glad that he hadn’t completely renovated the room that held the the old school double claw foot tub, the old lady that owned the house told him that her husband had gotten it made especially for them, so that they could both fit in the tub, this also meant that two super soldiers can fit in it comfortably. Bucky filled the tub with hot water and sat, waving a hand for Steve to join him. They lay in the hot water for a while until he sees Steve start to drift off, so he opens the new bottle of soap he had gotten this afternoon and proceeds to wash Steve and then himself quickly, pulling them both out as Steve dries them. 

“I’m going to go grab snacks, do you want to grab the shirt you had earlier?” Bucky asks after sliding on boxers and handing Steve a pair as well, he feels Steve brush his back so he reaches a hand back and leads them down the stairs they get a snack, and Steve grabs the shirt and the blankets off the bed. 

They get upstairs and settle into the bed, in a nest of comfort, and fall asleep wrapped together, safe, and happy for the first time in too long.


End file.
